All Is Not Lost

January 8, 2013 – 4:01 pm

There’s been so much focus lately on the senescence and decline of Western culture that I think it’s important to take a minute, now and then, to remind ourselves that we still possess much of great and lasting value — and that the magnificent legacy of Plato and Aristotle, of Shakespeare, Leonardo, Beethoven, Goethe, Newton, Michelangelo, Bernini, Voltaire, Galileo, Mozart, Gauss, Aquinas, Kant, Bacon, Keats, Hume, Carlyle, Chopin, Byron, and the rest of our immortal pantheon still inspires, even in the autumn of our civilization, creations of transcendent beauty.

It should be noted that tomorrow would be Richard Nixon’s one hundredth birthday.

We all have our favorite Milhouse memories. I remember being at a McAnn’s near Times Square, watching him on television declaring that he is not a crook (the guy next to me at the bar turned to me: “Well, do you think he’s a crook?”). I saw him call it quits at a Resignation Party in Martha’s Vineyard, also attended by Nina Phillips and the daughter of John Anderson, who would later run for President. (The father. Not the daughter.)

However my favorite remembrance of Evasive Richard was watching a speech where he sternly declared that “America can’t stand pat.” I figured he was just complaining about his wife: “America can’t stand Pat.”